HOSTAGE DRAMA IN MOSCOW: THE AFTERMATH; Hostage Toll in Russia Over 100; Nearly All Deaths Linked to Gas

The number of hostages who died as a result of a raid on a Moscow theater jumped to 117 today, as more people succumbed to the effects of a debilitating gas that Russian security forces used as they stormed the building being held by Chechen guerrillas.

The mounting number of dead, from among more than 750 hostages, cast a deep shadow over a predawn raid that the authorities had at first hailed as a successful operation. Also darkening the mood were disclosures that doctors were almost completely unprepared to treat the hostages for gas-related problems.

Whether criticism would fall over President Vladimir V. Putin, who approved the raid, was less clear. Russian television, largely state-run, said little about the number of dead, or the many who are ill. The respected Moscow daily newspaper Kommersant, on the other hand, led a special edition today with the headline ''Killer Gas.''

Tonight the Moscow officials who oversaw medical care for the hostages admitted that the gas had exacted a high toll but argued that it was the exceptional circumstances of its use -- not the nature of the gas itself -- that made it lethal.

''We don't know the name of the gas,'' Andrei P. Seltovsky, the chairman of the Health Committee of Moscow, said tonight. ''The competent bodies know.''

He added: ''As for its action, there is no surprise for us from the toxicological point of view. It's just that the use was unusual, under unusual conditions.''

Doctors who frantically treated the hundreds of hostages transported early Saturday to local hospitals said they were tending patients who suffered from the effects of poisoning.

Besides the hostages killed, 50 Chechen hostage takers died, the government said. None of the special forces that conducted the raid died, evidently because they did not enter the hall until the gas lifted.

A spokesman for the American Embassy here said tonight that Russia had not yet replied to a formal request by the United States for the name of the agent used in the raid.

Whatever the nature of the gas or its use, it appears to have claimed the life of one of every seven civilians seized by the Chechen guerrillas who invaded a musical play at a converted Soviet culture palace last Wednesday evening.

Of the 117 hostages confirmed dead so far, the Moscow health committee said tonight, only one had died of gunshot wounds. The remaining 116 hostages appear to have died of gas-related injuries.

Of the hundreds more who remain hospitalized, committee officials said, 145 were in intensive care, some gravely ill. Virtually all of those also were suffering the effects of the still-unnamed gas.

Only 51 of the dead have been identified, including three foreigners from the Netherlands, Austria and Germany. The United States Embassy here, which earlier said that three Americans had been taken hostage, stated tonight that it could now confirm only two.

In but one indication of the confusion that still enveloped the rescue operation nearly two days after its end, an embassy spokesman said the United States government had yet to find one American, identified elsewhere as a 49-year-old Oklahoma man, Sandy Booker, in the 14 hospitals to which hostages were taken.

The other, identified only as Natalia Aleshnya, was visited by embassy physicians tonight in a Moscow intensive care ward. She did not appear to be in serious danger.

With weekend interviews with the hostages and other accounts, it has become increasingly clear that much of the original account provided by Russian officials was erroneous or, in the case of the death and injury toll, underestimated.

That included the original explanation offered on Saturday for the raid -- that Russian special forces had rushed the building after Chechen guerrillas began carrying out their long-threatened promises to execute hostages.

In fact, it became known today, the raid had been planned almost since the hostages were taken Wednesday evening during a performance of a musical called ''Nord-Ost,'' and it was even rehearsed on Friday at a Moscow cultural center with the same layout as the one under siege.

The shootings of two hostages cited as justification for the raid occurred about three hours before the raid itself, after one hostage apparently cracked under pressure and moved toward the guerrillas, witnesses said tonight.

The raid began at about 5 a.m., when special forces pumped into the theater's ventilation system what an unnamed special operations officer, quoted today in a rare Sunday edition of Kommersant, called a ''combat nervous paralyzing gas.''

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Kommersant quoted the officer as saying that the troops also threw several grenades filled with gas into the hall.

That officer and others cited in Moscow news accounts today said that snipers shot the unconscious guerrillas carrying explosives, all of them evidently women, to prevent them from detonating their bombs. ''We were finishing off all those who had explosives on them because people could come to or, on the contrary, convulsions could start,'' the officer was quoted as saying.

Video of the inside of the theater widely broadcast this weekend showed a number of female hostage-takers slumped dead in theater seats with no visible bullet wounds. That comported with reports elsewhere that guerrillas as well as their captives had died from the effects of the gas.

Many of the hostages were already asleep when the raid began before dawn. Several who were interviewed today said they could recall little of what happened. Those who had been awake had but fragmentary memories of shots and explosions, but quickly lost consciousness.

Several of the survivors who escaped with less severe injuries said they had covered their faces with wet handkerchiefs or clothing, minimizing their exposure. One hostage, an economist, said some of the hostage-takers did as well.

''They put handkerchiefs on their face,'' said the hostage, who identified himself as Vladimir Nikolayevich.

''I did the same. It smelled of grass and ginger. Then I lost consciousness and woke up in an ambulance.''

Today, Moscow health officials said that the gas's effects might have varied according to where the hostages sat in the theater and to the state of their health and to other factors like their age.

There were no doctors on hand at the theater to provide emergency treatment to the most seriously injured hostages, a standard practice in disasters, a failing compounded by the amount of time -- 90 minutes -- that was needed to carry 763 hostages form the building and into waiting vehicles.

Moreover, health officials said tonight that they were not notified until ''a very short time'' before the raid took place that they should be prepared to treat patients for overdoses.

One doctor said tonight that hospitals were instructed to use Naloxone, a drug commonly prescribed to counteract opiates like heroin and methadone, to treat victims. The Moscow daily newspaper Moskovsky Komsomolets quoted an unidentified hospital physician as saying that the order to use Naloxone came only after the theater had been stormed, and that ambulances on the scene carried only a basic supply of the drug.

Hundreds of hostages were carried to hospitals not in ambulances, but in city buses, and therefore had no access to drugs at all.

One diplomatic official said many of those in hospitals were still suffering from the effects of the agent, leaving many unconscious or disoriented.

''These people are still heavily under the influence of what was used on them,'' the official said.

The use of the gas raised questions about Russia's compliance with the treaty banning chemical weapons, which Russia has signed and ratified.

The treaty, known as the Chemical Weapons Convention, allows the use of chemical agents like tear gas for ''law enforcement including domestic riot control.''

At the same time, it prohibits the use of many common chemical agents in any circumstances and requires that ''riot control agents'' have effects that ''disappear within a short time following termination of exposure.''

In Phoenix today, where President Bush stopped after a summit meeting in Mexico, the White House spokesman, Ari Fleischer, declined to comment on the Russian decision to use gas to end the hostage siege.

''The president abhors the loss of all life,'' he said. ''This is a reminder of the tragedy that can unfold when terrorists attack.''

Asked whether that was an endorsement of the use of gas, Mr. Fleischer said: ''We didn't say that. We don't know what all the facts are.''

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A version of this article appears in print on October 28, 2002, on Page A00001 of the National edition with the headline: HOSTAGE DRAMA IN MOSCOW: THE AFTERMATH; Hostage Toll in Russia Over 100; Nearly All Deaths Linked to Gas. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe